I’m stuck in the fetal position on Laura’s couch. Any attempt to extend my legs is punished with the sensation of a cinder block somersaulting in my stomach. I have no clue what’s happening and neither does Laura, who’s on the phone relaying the symptoms to my mom. The women make an executive decision: I’m going to the ER.
This hospital is close to Laura’s apartment in downtown St. Paul, but there are a few problems: (1) downtown St. Paul is an unqualified road engineering disaster, infested with curved streets, random one-ways, and triangular intersections; (2) Laura hates navigating; and (3) the GPS phone app does not account for the hospital construction, which blocked off several entrance roads.
Curled up in the front seat, I tilt left and right while Laura zig-zags in search of the hospital. The panicky left and right turns jolt my gut, causing a series of involuntary groaning that distracts poor Laura even more. “We’ll never make it” I think to myself, “whatever organ is trying to explode should just get it over with.”
And then we see it: a beautiful glowing red cross. Laura brings me right up front; I exit the car doubled over, and shuffle towards the promised land.
Proceeding through the doors, I envision an army of physicians waiting to throw me on a gurney and knock me out with a pain-killing-sedative. When I stumble in, however, all that stands before me is a short elderly woman with a clipboard and a smile.
She tilts her head slightly down to make eye contact, she greets me like I’m a kindergartner at school:
“Well hello! Are you okay?”
“Nope.”
“Oh I’m so sorry, let’s sit down!”
She leads me to the triage desk and I collapse into a chair. Treating the counter like a pillow, I mumble my insurance information, health history, and lack of medication allergies. Now gimme the drugs.
I’m brought to the patient room, where I’m certain they’ll start treating my pain. Instead they check my blood pressure. The squeaky sound of that pump makes me feel like I’m being mocked. The nurse then asks how I would rate my pain from 1 to 10. Out of reverence for childbirth’s rightful claim to 10, I settle for 9.
Laura walks in and gets the updates from the nurse. My mom arrives shortly later. She too is a nurse–not one who’s employed at this hospital, but is privately contracted to work in any one where her child is a patient. After getting a full update from the ER staff, she settles in and catches up with Laura.
And then, I hear the most beautiful sound in the world: cart wheels rolling on the hallway floor. When the drug tray appears, I feel like a kid who just saw Santa emerge from the fire place with a bag-full of presents.
The medicine is injected, but before it kicks in, the ER doctor bursts onto the scene, sporting a lumberjack beard and thick framed glasses made in 1979.
His suitability for the night shift becomes even clearer when he starts talking. He talks 100 miles per hour. And in an attempt to cheer me up, he sprinkles his remarks with punchlines–the kind that are commonly accompanied by rimshot sound effects. My mom and Laura shower him with adoring laughter.
Just when my mood cannot get any worse, however, the imaginary knives in my abdomen slowly depart, the ability to straighten my body comes back, the doctor’s jokes start to improve.
I’m in heaven.
While relaxing in a luxurious morphine cloud, I suddenly hear the faint sound of my mom demanding an MRI to rule out cancer.
My buzz was shattered: “huh?? what?”
Staying true to his jolly outlook on life, the doctor expresses how unnecessary that is. But what he doesn’t realize is that the woman he’s arguing with had once wanted me to drop out of a marathon because it was raining.
MRI it is.
Surrounding my head is a giant mechanical tunnel. I must be still and quiet: having no choice but to reflect.
I think about Laura, who had just accepted my engagement proposal a week earlier. To think that if this is a life crippling condition, she’ll have to care for me from here on out…thank God I locked her in.
But then come the more serious thoughts—what if it this is life ending? I have no power to change the story line. Nor do I have the right: many people—better people than me—face these tragedies every day. What makes me special? Sobering up to this reminder, I feel no choice but to pray and hope as they wheel me back to my room.
The ER doctor returns with the news, which he delivers in an unusually solemn voice: “Well, Kyle, we looked at the MRI and your blood work. . .” He then pauses, at which time I promise God to be grateful if I’m spared. Then he drops the diagnosis: “. . .and what we’re seeing is the most expensive gas problem you’ve ever had.”
The laughter from my mom and Laura returns with a vengeance, and so does my rage:
“What kind of diagnosis is that?!” I shouted silently, “all that agony…all that vulnerability… all that sweating, whimpering, and vomiting…doesn’t that at least earn me the appendicitis merit badge??”
Nope, just gas.
Apparently after enjoying a large dinner, milk shake, and two dark beers, my digestive system became lazy and things got stuck, causing an air bubble to expand. That was it. If I ever run for office and these medical records are leaked, I’m done for.
To conclude, the doctor places me on a 24-hour liquid diet, “…except for Jello,” he told me, “you can have Jello if you’d like!” Now I really feel like a kindergartner at school.
Resting in bed the next day, I contemplate how I could regain my inner sense of toughness and come up with nothing. The truest toughness I would later see comes from Laura (who has since confronted level 10 on the pain scale three times, and will do it once again this October). In the meantime, however, there is nothing to do but consider myself lucky, just like I promised.
Trigger Topics 